A Lifetime of Systems Thinking • Hacker News Board

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#61

Post by ethanbond » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

visualradio wrote: post #58

ethanbond wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the author say managerial class in relation to this statement? When one says “social system,” as this author actually does, do you think he arbitrarily excludes people below a certain pay grade?

> A corporation that fails to provide an adequate return for their investment to its employees and customers is just as likely to fail as one that does not reward its shareholders adequately. Author distinguishes corporation from employees in following sentence, so managers likely refers to employers which employ the employees. Employees are those who are employed by employers, the managers are those employers.

Person A is an employee with no managerial responsibility. Person B is the direct manager of Person A and no one else.

Is your interpretation of the author’s argument that Person B and all of her superiors hold the same objective of improving the quality of their work life, but that Person A does not hold this as their objective?

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#62

Post by neolog » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #57

neolog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there enough to run a largish organization? Nope. I'm not convinced this is true. I can think of some small organizations full of employees who could make more money elsewhere but who are dedicated to an altruistic cause.

> small Sounds like you agree with me. BTW, the D Language Foundation is an example :-)

I can think of a bunch of small organizations. Together that's enough people to fill a large organization. Maybe there are some other properties of large organizations that make it impossible to compose them out of altruistic people.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#63

Post by visualradio » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #61

visualradio wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A corporation that fails to provide an adequate return for their investment to its employees and customers is just as likely to fail as one that does not reward its shareholders adequately. Author distinguishes corporation from employees in following sentence, so managers likely refers to employers which employ the employees. Employees are those who are employed by employers, the managers are those employers.

Person A is an employee with no managerial responsibility. Person B is the direct manager of Person A and no one else. Is your interpretation of the author’s argument that Person B and all of her superiors hold the same objective of improving the quality of their work life, but that Person A does not hold this as their objective?

The format of the article was that of a critique. The author described how systems currently operate in a manner he viewed as deficient and then suggested ideas for improvements.

When the author states "the principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation", the author was implying that this is wrong.

They then stated that "Employees have a much larger investment in most corporations than their shareholders. Corporations should be maximizing stakeholder, not shareholder, value to employees, customers, and shareholders."

Thus the author semantically implies that "employees" are a separate group of persons from "those who manage the corporations". If employees and "those who manage the corporation" were the same group of persons or part of the system, then it would not have been necessary for the author to claim that corporations should also maximize value for employees, they would have only mentioned customers as the excluded group of stakeholders.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#64

Post by thewakalix » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #61

visualradio wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A corporation that fails to provide an adequate return for their investment to its employees and customers is just as likely to fail as one that does not reward its shareholders adequately. Author distinguishes corporation from employees in following sentence, so managers likely refers to employers which employ the employees. Employees are those who are employed by employers, the managers are those employers.

Person A is an employee with no managerial responsibility. Person B is the direct manager of Person A and no one else. Is your interpretation of the author’s argument that Person B and all of her superiors hold the same objective of improving the quality of their work life, but that Person A does not hold this as their objective?

The objective of a corporation is a distinct concept from the objectives of the people working in the corporation. They may or may not align, depending on which person you're comparing it to.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#65

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 3:23 AM UTC

neolog wrote: post #62

WalterBright wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> small Sounds like you agree with me. BTW, the D Language Foundation is an example :-)

I can think of a bunch of small organizations. Together that's enough people to fill a large organization. Maybe there are some other properties of large organizations that make it impossible to compose them out of altruistic people.

I can't think of any large organization that operates without people motivated by their self interest. Can you?

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#66

Post by brody_hamer » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 3:42 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #32

> The interactive manager plans backward from where he wants to be ideally, right now, not forward to where he wants to be in the future. I'm having trouble understanding this point. Is he saying the interactive manager looks backwards at what he might have done differently in the past, to be in a better place today? Would a better term for this be a "retrospective manager"? Or does this mean something else?

I’ve heard this put another way, when someone asked me: “what did the ideal version of yourself do differently today?”

Which I found to be a dramatically different, and dramatically easier question to answer than something like “where do you want to be in 5 years?”

I found it help me shift away from trying to make predictions, and towards making healthy, productive (not self-sabotaging), well-rounded decisions with obvious long term benefits.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#67

Post by neolog » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 4:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #65

neolog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a bunch of small organizations. Together that's enough people to fill a large organization. Maybe there are some other properties of large organizations that make it impossible to compose them out of altruistic people.

I can't think of any large organization that operates without people motivated by their self interest. Can you?

I can't think of any large organizations containing only people who are financially secure, which seems like basically a prerequisite.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#68

Post by jshen » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

dkubb wrote: post #52

jshen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure who he is thinking of when he says, “those who manage a corporation”. If he means senior executives then he is definitely wrong. Most executives do not have a high quality of work life. They may get money, power, and status, but it often comes at a high cost.

Your comment is being downvoted, but IME working at a few startups where the owner went from making 2M to 10M, then 50 and 100M+ a year I rarely saw founders who had a good work/life balance. Sure, they could afford to pay people to take care of all their domestic needs, their life consisted mostly of working 24/7. Even their vacations were often working vacations. I think your characterization is accurate.

Thanks, really not sure what people are voting it down for. I know a lot of sr execs at big companies, they definitely aren’t optimizing for their work life balance or their mental health. Most seem obsessed with status and seem generally anxious and unbalanced.

Edit: I’m talking about big co execs, not founders. They are typically two different breeds.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#69

Post by gerbler » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

bjterry wrote: post #60

I have been thinking a lot about Systems Thinking recently. Will Larson writes in An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management that it's one of the most useful general tools he's discovered for approaching management problems. That inspired me to read Donella Meadows Thing in Systems , but even after reading that, I'm not sure how to apply it to engineering organizations. It's only tangential to this topic, b…

Have you come across Business Dynamics by John Sterman? It's essentially Meadows approach applied to the business environment, including thinking about general organizational structure.

Re: A Lifetime of Systems Thinking

#70

Post by michael1999 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

bjterry wrote: post #60

I have been thinking a lot about Systems Thinking recently. Will Larson writes in An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management that it's one of the most useful general tools he's discovered for approaching management problems. That inspired me to read Donella Meadows Thing in Systems , but even after reading that, I'm not sure how to apply it to engineering organizations. It's only tangential to this topic, b…

Toyota and their production system comes to mind as the prototype of a system oriented company that transformed their industry. And Ford, in the original.